Medical device companies must seriously treat customers’ complaints in compliance with regulatory quality standards. However, compliance with regulations does not necessarily mean you’re focused on customer satisfaction.
Most MedTech companies are small and medium-sized, and customer satisfaction is sometimes not fully understood and considered for different reasons.
Imagine this scene: You are with a colleague discussing a product feature that produces customer’s dissatisfaction. And to support the thesis that this is not a real problem, he/she shows you that none of the complaints collected about the product is related to that feature.
Despite having anecdotal feedback on the problem, you do not have robust data; therefore, customer satisfaction with this feature is considered good.
Let’s have a look at the impact of customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and customer complaints to see what is wrong with this kind of reasoning.
Impact on Customer Satisfaction
A satisfied customer means aligning expectations and performance, encouraging re-purchase, and possibly word-of-mouth marketing. This marketing, which is very well developed in other markets, is also a concrete opportunity in the medical device and pharmaceutical industry.
Word-of-mouth marketing happens when very satisfied customers (delighted customers) talk about a company’s product or service to their colleagues and friends.
This marketing is a powerful form of promotion as customers trust their peers over traditional marketing and sales tools.
Therefore, medical device and pharma companies should find ways to encourage and develop this form of marketing through customer satisfaction, reaching customer delight.
Customer satisfaction is meaningful because it helps improve the performance of products and services and gives knowledge on the weak and strong points of the business. Likewise, it draws attention to areas where progress is needed and to the various sources of customers’ frustration.
Impact of Dissatisfaction
Dissatisfaction is the degree of disparity between expectations and customer perception of product performance. And it has some important implications for a medical company.
Dissatisfied customers are not only expected to stop purchasing with an erosion of customer portfolio. As explained by the story of Sam Walton in my previous post, these customers usually do not complain.
They just leave, and they can start producing negative word-of-mouth affecting other potential customers and negatively impacting the company’s reputation.
Customer Complaints
Customer complaints are a very delicate topic and, in my experience, very often misjudged by the MedTech industry.
To be clear in this post, I’m not discussing the complaint handling procedure that must settle according to the regulatory requirement. I will consider as complaints any feedback about the product from the customer satisfaction perspective.
Some people think they’re getting a good surrogate of customer satisfaction by collecting customer complaints, but it is well known that only a limited percentage of dissatisfied customers will complain.
Medical device companies must have a formally designated unit with clear procedures to receive, review, and evaluate complaints. However, the various sources like users, customer service staff, sales team, or frontline representatives are not keen to initiate the process if not strictly necessary.
The reality is that it is easier to stop buying than to complain. Dissatisfied customers can start a bad word of mouth that can grow exponentially and become relevant.
Therefore, the best thing a MedTech company can do is make it easy for customers or any other individual concerned to report a complaint.
Moreover, by listening to customer complaints, the MedTech companies can find ideas for product improvement or new product development.
Dealing with customer complaints
Given the potential downside of having dissatisfied customers and the opportunity for product or service improvement, MedTech companies must deal with negative feedback properly.
For example:
- Setting up quick and easy systems to receive customer feedback, thereby minimizing the effort for the user or any other stakeholder.
- Contact the complaining customer as quickly as possible. The slower the company responds the more dissatisfaction may grow and lead to negative word of mouth.
- Accept responsibility for the customer’s disappointment; do not blame the customer.
- Show empathy in any communication.
- If possible, resolve the complaint quickly and to the customer’s satisfaction.
- Use complaint handling as an opportunity to show that you care about the customer.
Conclusion
Customer satisfaction is a central marketing concept. Recognizing the influence of customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and complaint handling are important to a company’s decisions.
In addition, customer-centered companies must focus on customer satisfaction as a basic element of customer loyalty and use the correct metrics to measure it. Customer complaints are a great source of improvement but are not a metric of customer satisfaction, especially in our industry.
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